Tag Archives: English

Free BBC Learning English App goes live With readily available daily updates of new, fun, topical and amazing lessons, transcripts and quizzes, our app will help English-language learners develop their English skills and become brilliant English-speakersPaul Scott, Editor, BBC Learning English Date: 29.08.2018 Last updated: 29.08.2018 at 13.13 Category: World Service One of the world’s most…

Vacuous management-speak is easily laughed off – but is there a real cost to talking rubbish? By André Spicer In early 1984, executives at the telephone company Pacific Bell made a fateful decision. For decades, the company had enjoyed a virtual monopoly on telephone services in California, but now it was facing a problem. The…

Matthew Engel urges us to hang tough against Americanisms in this entertaining history of linguistic imperialism Toilet training: is nowhere safe from the Americanisms that have been polluting our language for years? Tim Adams Monday 3 July 2017 08.00 BSTLast modified on Tuesday 4 July 2017 11.49 BST Iworked for a few years in my 20s at the literary…

Have you made a flagrant error, in confusing your alternative choices? The legendary Fleet Street editor Harold Evans proscribes this glossary to solve your language dilemmas Ifreely acknowledge that, in a list of this sort, “glossary” is a fancy Latin word for a collection of pet peeves (noun, 1919), meaning an annoyance or irritation. One of my…

Article Author: Peter Ball Wednesday, April 19, 2017 – 12:43 We South Africans live in a polyglot society, which under our Constitution, has 11 official languages that “must enjoy parity of esteem and must be treated equitably”. Mother tongues range from Afrikaans to IsiZulu, from isiXhosa to Setswana, however to stop us being…

About The Walrus Foundation Fearless. Witty. Thoughtful. Canadian AddThis Sharing Buttons The walrus foundation is a registered charitable non-profit (No. 861851624-RR0001) with an educational mandate to create forums for matters vital to Canadians. The foundation is dedicated to supporting writers, artists, ideas, and thought-provoking conversation. We achieve these goals across multiple platforms: publishing The…

Bad English has always been with us, but clarity and style are far more important than observing dusty usage diktats People often ask me why I followed my 2011 book on the history of violence, The Better Angels of Our Nature, with a writing style manual. I like to say that after having written 800…

The other day my wife and I were watching BBC 4’s Nigel Slater’s Icing on the Cake (available on BBC iPlayer for the next three weeks) ‘a nostalgic and funny journey back in time exploring the earliest origins of cake in Britain …’ A part of the programme was devoted to the Clandestine Cake Club which describes itself as…